


Do Re Mi

by GodsHumbleClown



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24886342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodsHumbleClown/pseuds/GodsHumbleClown
Summary: This is my post for day 4 of Newsies Girl Week. The character is Esther Jacobs.Her life, from Poland to New York, in a song.
Relationships: Esther Jacobs/Mayer Jacobs
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Canon Era Newsies One Shots





	Do Re Mi

_ Do, a deer, a female deer.  _

As a young child, Esther was a baby deer, gangly and awkward, with big eyes and soft brown hair. She was all legs, and tripped on anything and everything.

Esther had no problem with this comparison, not one bit. Deer, in Esther's opinion, were the most beautiful animals. Fast and strong, with their soft brown fur and dark eyes like midnight and spots like new snow. Esther did so love polka dots. 

If Esther was a baby doe, her Mama was a full-grown one, elegant, lovely, quiet, unless she was singing, of course. She was just beautiful, and her Papa was the handsomest buck anybody ever saw. 

Esther, for one, thought that if any man deserved to have a proud rack of antlers sprouted from his head, it would be Papa. 

He laughed at this, and called her his silly little tzvia, but she just knew he would look even more handsome with fuzzy brown antlers like a buck. 

  
  
  


_ Re, a drop of golden sun  _

Esther loved the sunrise. As a young girl, scarcely away from her mother's side, she would wake up in the cold dark and slip out the door, quiet as a whisper. 

She wrapped herself in her pretty blue shawl and darted out and up and over to the fat green hill behind the house, where she had the perfect view of the beautiful pink and purple and red and orange of the sky. 

Esther faced the sun as it rose, arms stretched high to let the rays warm her face, greeting the new day. 

  
  
  


_ Mi, a name I call myself _

In Papa's old red fabric covered  _ Tanakh, _ they had the story of Esther. Not little Esther, of course, but  _ Queen _ Esther, her namesake. Queen Esther, cousin of Mordecai, who helped save all her people from being  _ killed _ by nasty old Haman's plans. 

Papa always read that story for Purim, and it was Esther's favorite.  _ Not  _ just because of her name,  _ Herschel _ , she would argue to her teasing older brother. Esther loved the story because of how God always protected his people, turning the king's anger to gentleness and freeing everyone from  _ persecution _ . (That big a word made little Esther feel very grown up.)

The queen was beautiful, too, wearing splendid gold and jewels that little Esther imagined must be prettier than all the flowers she could ever pick. 

"Perhaps such a time as this is what you were created for," Mordecai said to Queen Esther. 

And little Esther always turned to her Papa and asked, "What time was I created for?"

  
  
  


_ Fa, a long way to run _

When Esther turned seven, Mama announced that she would soon have a little brother or sister. Esther had never been more pleased. 

Soon, on a cold day in late autumn, a baby boy was born. Little Benjamin, like the son of Jacob and Rachel from Papa's big old book. He was beautiful, and Esther loved him with all her heart. 

Everything was perfect, until it wasn't. Until Mama couldn't leave the bed, ever ever again, until one day she didn't wake up. Benjamin cried, and Esther wanted to cry too. But she was too big to cry. Papa and Herschel needed her to be a lady now, to take care of Benjamin. 

Papa couldn't stand to see the house when Mama wasn't in it, singing and filling it with light and sweetness. He said they were going to America, to live with Esther's grandparents. 

Uncle Aaron said  _ emigrating  _ was foolish, that Papa couldn't run away from his grief. Esther, though she would  _ never _ speak so rudely to her uncle, thought  _ he _ was silly to call Papa foolish. Papa knew everything, and he knew going to America was best, so it must be.

Traveling by boat made Esther ill. She held Benjamin when Papa slept, rocking him so he wouldn't cry and disturb everyone else on the crowded boat. 

She had never been so happy as when she stood on the pier, solid wood that didn't rock and sway. 

Happy, yet still, she wanted to cry. 

The sky was grey, the city was grey, the water was grey. 

Esther wished for flowers, for sunlight, for her Mama. 

  
  
  


_ So, a needle pulling thread _

Esther loved her Bubbe and Zayde immediately. 

Bubbe patiently taught her to sew, all on her own. Soon Esther was turning scraps into clothes for her dolls and toys for Benjamin, and helping with the mending, as Bubbe's old fingers and eyes couldn't work for so long as they used to. 

Zayde taught her English. It was so confusing, all the new sounds and letters and everything, but Zayde was just as smart as Papa, maybe smarter. 

He taught her to read the newspaper, all about politics and weather and everything else in the world. The boring gray of paper and type turned into the beautiful, bold colors of people and places and fires and oceans, all the things Esther wished to learn, right at her fingertips. 

Any time Esther saw the word Poland, she neatly clipped out the page, saving it in her little wooden box that Herschel had made for her to keep precious secrets. 

  
  
  


_ La, a note to follow so _

When Esther was fourteen, she had become known as the prettiest voice among her friends. According to Papa, she was the prettiest in all of New York; according to reality, she was probably just the best in the tenements. 

Benjamin always insisted she had the best voice, and Esther always insisted she didn't, until their neighbor, Mayer Jacobs, said she sang like an angel, and Esther thought, just maybe, she should start doing her hair just a little differently. 

Mayer gave her a beautiful ribbon, blue with white polka dots, and she swore she would  _ never _ take it out of her hair. 

  
  
  


_ Ti, a drink with jam and bread _

Esther, now a young lady, sat with her Bubbe and Zayde every afternoon, working on some sewing and mending for the neighbors in exchange for a bit more money. "For a wedding," as Zayde said, sipping his tea with shaky hands. Esther knew he was thinking of Mayer, because she was too. 

She would never forget the day Mayer came over, nervous as a deer would be in the city, and asked her on a walk. It was a beautiful day, he said, green as the prettiest spring could be after a horrible cold winter, and it would be just wrong to waste it all inside. 

Esther, of course, agreed, leaving her sewing for later. 

Later, of course, she was far too busy planning for the wedding.

  
  
  


_ That brings us back to Do _

Papa cried at the wedding, saying she looked just like her mother, and Esther cried too, just a bit. 

Her home with Mayer was little, but just perfect for them and their soon to be family. 

When Esther looked at her beautiful baby, big brown eyes, and lovely soft hair, she just knew that nothing had ever been so beautiful. 


End file.
